My musings on life and Godliness

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Rough Surf: Empty Heart

Sometimes life comes at us like the angry, billowing waves near Blow Hole on Oahu. The ride looks fantastic, exhilarating, but it can end in disaster, even for accomplished surfers. And let’s face it: even the perfect wave ends and the surfer lives in expectation of only the next high.

The peak on the far right is Blow Hole, but the wind, surf, and undertow were so fierce that day that the lifeguard warned Dave: “Make sure you keep her (2 1/2 year-old Kelsey) up on the hard-packed sand only.”

Most tourists get to see spray like the photo above when they visit Blow Hole. However, this day…

…Dave came away with almost a dozen photos showing the power of the waves as they exploded from the hole.

Being swept away, a possibility on the beach that day, can happen to people who live no where near am ocean. We all fall prey to cataclysmic events that turn us and our world upside down. Many who have never uttered God’s name except in profanity now demand an answer for what has happened. “Where was God when…?” echos verbally or internally. We all can discover that the pleasures or events we thought we had control of, actually held us in their grasp and the ride ranked anywhere from disappointing to disastrous. Whether sex, education, food, control, thrills, money, power, possessions, vacations, or any other bauble the world offers will ever satisfy the heart. Why? I believe that this world is only a preparation for my final destination, an eternity with Christ. My heart senses an emptiness about even the best things this world offers.

Others have said it far better than I:

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” St. Augustine, The Confessions (300’s)

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person, and it can never be filled by any created thing. It can only be filled by God, made known through Jesus Christ.” Blaise Pascal, Pensees (1600’s)

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952)